Patton students build chairs for kindergarteners

Kindergarten students from Hillendale Elementary School with the new chairs, hand-made by seventh and eighth grade students at Patton Middle School, after the older students delivered them in person earlier this month.

PENNSBURY — It was a special, end of the year, chance for some Patton Middle School students to give back — to other, younger students.

More than 50 Charles Patton Middle School students helped in the designing, building and painting of “Kinder chairs” that were delivered to each of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District elementary schools earlier this month.

The chair delivery — which the middle school students able to directly interact with kindergartners — was the final step a year-long cooperative project between Patton’s Technology Education, led by teacher Jason Palo, and the Art Department, led by Ann Ferron.

One fun detail is that many of the students were able to present chairs to the elementary school — and even the same kindergarten class — they attended some years ago.

It seems like all of these Hillendale kindergarten students wanted to try sitting on their new Husky chair.

“I think our kids are well known for giving back to the greater community,” Palo said. “But this was a great opportunity to give back to the school community.”

The chairs got their distinctive shapes (all were unique, related to subject matter) through student work in the Tech Ed. department. Once the chairs were built, they went to the Art Department to get a custom, one-of-a-kind paint job.

At each of the four elementary schools, the middle school students brought in the chairs with covers (provided with assistance from Patton’s Family Consumer Science department) and had the kids guess what the chairs represented. As an example, at Hillendale, where the school mascot is a husky dog, there were a couple of variations on that theme, along with other animals.